Winter Break

Here's what I did over break, in list form. At the ripe old age of 21, my memory is starting to fail me so it won't be too long or detailed. 

• Slept in...A lot
• Scheduled consultation with surgeon
• Got Just Dance 3 as an early Christmas present
• Played Just Dance 3
• Christmas Eve with the whole family. Ate yummy food. More Just Dance 3...Klaire was so cute dancing! Opened presents from aunts and uncles. Got some cupcake PJ's (which I love!), cupcake liners and edible ink pens for decorating, a cupcake calendar, cupcake book, and probably a few more things. Seeing a theme? 
• Spent the night at my aunt's and got to spend time with my sisters
• Christmas. Opened presents...three more cupcake books, more cupcake liners, an OSU hoodie (which I also love!), 
• Met with surgeon the day after Christmas. Scheduled surgery for the 28th.
• Watched my sister Sunhee at her Jiu Jitsu class. Ended up being a part of the class. The instructor likes parent participation...older sisters too. It's really hard to practice moves on someone who is half your size.
• Had surgery. Detailed post to come.
• My friend Sara visited me the day after surgery. I couldn't do anything so we got caught up and watched YouTube videos. Not the best idea. Laughing was painful and I felt it for the next few days.
• My cousins stayed with us New Year's weekend. Lamest New Year's Eve ever. I couldn't do anything or eat anything. With 10 seconds left on the countdown, everyone accumulated downstairs in the living room and we hugged, kissed, and wished each other a happy new year.
• Watched Harry Potter 7 Part 2
• Watched the Pretty Little Liars premiere with my sister
• Made my cousins and sister CD's with KPop (Korean Pop) songs. I'm glad they've jumped on the Kpop bandwagon. Pretty soon I'll have everyone listening to it. 
• Went shopping. 
• Hung out with my friend Stephanie, something we hadn't done in a long time (like a year).
• Went to church. The bishop held up a garbage bag filled with a paper chain. It was his Christmas present from the primary children. Each link on the chain represented a week where a child read the scriptures by themselves or with their parents. He had everyone go into the gym after sacrament meeting and had the children hold the chain up for everyone to see. It was so long it stretched around the whole gym. It was pretty impressive and inspiring. My home ward is so awesome.

I think that's pretty much it. 

Hey Stranger!

After neglecting my blog for so long, I'm finally back. I've been meaning to get back into the habit of blogging, but so much time has passed since my last post that I've been avoiding it. I treat my blog somewhat like a journal (minus the really personal stuff), so when a lot of time passes between posts I dread having to play catch up. Because I can't remember everything from the past four months, I'll start with Christmas break and go from there (unless I remember something that I really want to write about). I might span this over a few posts, depending on how much I write. I don't like reading extremely long posts so I won't make you sit and read one.

December 20th: I left for the airport at 6:30 A.M. I actually managed to get a few hours of sleep before leaving. I usually never sleep the night before flying anywhere because it's always a morning flight and I'm extremely slow at packing (plus I'm usually doing laundry so I have all my clothes to choose from). I came really close to missing my flight. I didn't expect there to be so many people at the airport because most students had already left for home. It was also the day that all the missionaries were flying home. It was pretty cool to see so many all in one place. It reminded me of when people in the military come home because so many people were shaking their hands and telling them they did great work as they walked by.

I, along with other people that were cutting it close to their boarding time, got to go to the front of a line to check our baggage. We were told to go through security at the International Flights section of the airport because it would be less busy. It was significantly less crowded, but they were telling many people to do the same so there was still a bit of a line. As I stood in line, my eyes almost never left the clock. It was as if I thought I could slow time down the harder I stared at it. I couldn't. As it got closer and closer to my departure time, I was starting to panic. Luckily I made it through and boarded my plane...with less than 10 minutes to spare.

It was a good flight. I got to the Portland Airport and had an hour to wait for my uncles to get in. When they arrived, we were picked up by another one of my uncles and my sister Sunhee. I didn't know she was coming so it was a great surprise. We stopped at Olive Garden for lunch and it was delicious! Then we went home. It felt so good to be home. The rest of the day was spent just catching up and relaxing...until after dinner.

I went to bed around 10:30 P.M. because I was tired and I was having slight abdominal pain. I tried to sleep, but it got worse and around 11 I got up crying and told my grandma. It hurt really bad. She suggested a heating pad to help ease the pain but I didn't stick with that for very long. The pain was so bad I couldn't lie still and keep it on. I went to tell her it wasn't working and had to run to the bathroom to vomit. *Sorry if this grosses you out.* I threw up a couple times and we decided to head to the emergency room. My uncle came too.

*I know I said I wouldn't make this long, but I don't want to stop in the middle of the story. Sorry I lied.*

There were a couple people ahead of me so I had to wait awhile. I vomited again while in the waiting room. My turn finally came around and I got into a hospital gown. Before they could give me anything for the pain, they had to take some blood. The nurse tried on my left arm first. My blood wasn't coming out very fast and he kept shoving the needle further into my arm. It hurt. Then the blood stopped coming out altogether so he switched to my right arm. Again, not much was coming out so he got someone else to do it. This nurse poked my left arm again and got the blood she needed. Usually I would have been bawling like a baby because I hate needles, but the abdominal pain was so bad I hardly noticed (except when the first nurse was attempting to shove the needle all the way up my arm).

I talked to the doctor and found out for sure that it was my gallbladder and that I was having a gallbladder attack. Between Olive Garden for lunch and the dinner my great grandmother made, it was too much rich food in one day for my body to handle. They gave me drugs for nausea and the pain, but the pain meds didn't work so they gave me something stronger. They kept telling me to calm my breathing because I was hyperventilating. I tried, but it was hard. I came really close to passing out...it's a weird feeling. My hands and arms even started going numb. Once the stronger pain killer kicked in, I was so comfortable and almost fell asleep (it's hard to sleep when people are constantly checking on you and you can hear the people on the other side of the curtain talking about why they are in the ER). I got an ultrasound and then was told I would have to have surgery while I was home. Boo!

After three hours in the ER, I finally got to go home. I was so drugged up and could barely walk to the car. My uncle jokingly asked if they took out my funny bone because I had been having a "Wendi Moment" (extreme case of the giggles, usually with tears) a few hours prior and now I looked dead. I threw up once more in the car (luckily I had a bowl). I finally got to sleep and thus ended my first day of break and being home.

Yay for completing my first blog post of the year!

Life Updates

Oct. 17: We had ward FHE. Our apartment (meaning me) was assigned to bring a dozen cupcakes. I made candy corn cupcakes. I divided the batter in half and dyed them yellow and orange. I frosted them with cream cheese frosting and added a candy corn. They were good and disappeared quickly.


Oct. 18: It was Ally's birthday. Earlier in the month I promised her I would make her pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. When I got the assignment to make cupcakes for ward FHE, I almost made them then. I wasn't sure if I would have enough to make them twice and I didn't want to have to go to the store to get stuff for the candy corn cupcakes. As I was talking about my dilemma and trying to decide what to do, Ally overheard me talking about how I said I would make her the pumpkin cupcakes. She said she was glad I remembered and that she thought about mentioning them to me to make sure I hadn't forgotten. I didn't and her excitement made it easy for me to decide. I would have to get candy corn from the store. Rylee actually bought them for me because she had to buy three pumpkins. Our FHE family was assigned to bring 15 small pumpkins for carving. We thought that was asking too much, to bring a treat and pumpkins (which are expensive, even the small ones). They didn't even get carved, at least not that I noticed while I was there. Wow, I strayed a little bit. Back to Ally. So I made her pumpkin cupcakes. She came over and we sang to her. They were pretty amazing.

Oct. 20: Turns out I didn't need that much pumpkin for Ally's cupcakes. Plus, pumpkin only comes in a big can. I had enough left to make almost 3 dozen more. I had some left over frosting too, enough to cover a dozen. I took them over to two guys' apartments. One was because Phil loves my cupcakes and while eating my candy corn cupcakes from Monday, he told me he would would finance my cupcake shop (Arianna was next to me and said she'd eat at my cupcake shop). I know it's not going to happen (though it would be nice if it did), but it was a really nice compliment. The other was James' apartment because he's cool and from Oregon. He gave me a hug and told me I smelled good. I took some without frosting downstairs to the the girls below us and to the guys in apartment 5 because they are pretty cool. The following conversation occurred.
Me: Hey, here are some pumpkin cupcakes...well I ran out of frosting so I guess they're naked cupcakes.
Leemur (real name is Lee, but he goes by Leemur): NAKED CUPCAKES!?!
Me: Or you can just call them muffins.

Oct. 21: Woke up with a sore throat. Rylee's friend Erika came for the weekend to surprise her.
Oct. 22: Lazy day. BYU kicked but during the game against Idaho state. The final score was 56-3. Sore throat was worse and the head cold started. Runny/stuffy nose, sneezing and congestion. Fun.
Oct. 23: Stake conference. Elder Ballard was there. Sadly, I was not. I didn't here my alarm go off and Arianna woke me up at 9:15. We were planning to leave by 9:30. I was NOT feeling good. My throat was hurting and I was tired from not getting enough sleep due to coughing and not being able to breath because I was all stuffed up. 9:20 and Christina told me I should get up too. Those two left to go save seats and I finally got out of bed. I was up just long enough to tell Rylee that I wasn't going to go, while crying. It wasn't so much the pain as it was I was missing out on such a great opportunity to see a member of the twelve. I went back to bed and slept. When I woke up I took a shower and was able to breath again.

Our ward writes "nice notes" to each other on Sunday after ward prayer. I received the following note written by Leemur.

My Dearest Wendi,
We, the citizenry of Arcadia 5, are greatly indebted to you for the delicious pumpkin nudey muffins. Shawn & I each ate two and Curtis snagged the last one. We love you!


Leemur & Arc. 5


Nudey muffins. I like that so much more than naked cupcakes. Also, that note means that two of the guys in that apartment missed out on said nudey muffins. Sad day for them. Since I was taught how to share, I will share this amazing recipe with you. Click here for deliciousness.

Oct. 24: My cold is pretty much gone!! Thanks to lots of water, Emergen-C (miracle cold remedy), and rest. I think this has been one of the shortest, if not the shortest, colds I've ever had.

Today: I went running!! Last Thursday, Arianna went running and told me I should go with her the next time she went. I said I would probably go, but knowing myself I probably wouldn't. Well, I did and I'm proud of myself. Christina went too. I didn't run as much as they did because I'm extremely out of shape and I just got over a cold. Kinda still getting over it. Christina said I sounded worse than her after running and she has asthma. Haha. Arianna and Christina both said I did good. I agree. I'm proud of myself for actually going because I really didn't want to. I mean really didn't want to. We're going running again on Thursday.

I think that's pretty much it. And if it's not, this post is long enough. Sorry for the long blogging absence. I won't let it happen again...probably.